After I checked the brothers in at the Drake-as the Rothsteins of Ohio-I headed for a telephone and called Sergeant Kleinhans. It took a while to track him down.
“Where are you, Peters?” he said. “You checked out of the LaSalle.”
“Some friends of Frank Nitti were looking for me,” I said. “I’ve got some news and questions. You want to hear them or do you want to threaten me?”
“Both,” he said. “What have you got?”
“The guy who put the finger on Chico is Gino Servi. Know him?”
“Yep. Keep going.”
“There’s a good chance that if Servi sees Chico Marx, he’ll know he’s the wrong man. Servi doesn’t like me, but I’ll give it a try.”
“You’re going to bring Chico Marx here for that?” said Kleinhans.
“I can get him if I have to,” I said. “The second possibility is to find someone who might have passed himself off as Chico Marx. He doesn’t have to look just like him, maybe wasn’t even gambling before. He might have a record. Between forty or fifty-five or so. Short.”
“That’s nothing to go on,” said Kleinhans. “But I’ll fish around. Where can I reach you?”
“You can’t. I’ll call you back. People in the Chicago police department are on Nitti’s payroll. They knew I was at the LaSalle and about the murder of Bistolfi before you did.”
Kleinhans laughed.
“Tell me something new,” he said. “O.K. Give me a call.”
I hung up, picked up my suitcase, went to the bar, ordered a Fleming flu special, and went outside to call a cab. I told the cabbie to take me to Kitty Kelly’s. There wasn’t a safe hotel for me in Chicago, and my friendships were nonexistent.
Suitcase in hand and collar up, I slouched into Kitty Kelly’s. Before my eyes adjusted to the dark, I blew my nose and did a little play with my coat buttons. Then I made out forms at the bar and the three Twenty-One tables. Merle Gordon was at the same table where I had seen her before.
“You don’t look so good,” she volunteered.
“I’ve been sick,” I sighed.
She rolled the dice and motioned me closer.
“Drop a quarter, pretend you’ve lost, and get the hell out of here,” she whispered. I tried to look down the top of her dress. She caught me, but I hadn’t been trying to hide it. She shook her head and grinned.
“You’re something,” she said. “You mentioned Kitty Kelly’s to get into the Fireside last night. Somebody remembered and came here asking about you.”
“Stumpy guy with a sling?” I guessed.
“Right,” she answered, rolling the dice. “I told him I didn’t know anybody who looked like you and no one else here remembered you, but one of the other girls might notice you right now. So goodbye, and it’s been nice knowing you.”
I didn’t move.
“Nowhere to go,” I said. “Can’t check into a hotel. The bad guys might have them covered, and I don’t know many people in Chicago.”
My eyes went down. I tried to look near defeat, shoulders slumped, eyes moist. Years ago it had worked on my wife Anne, but the last time I tried it on her she wasn’t having any. She had had enough of mothering me.
Merle pulled a pad of paper from under the table and scribbled on it. Then she reached deeper under the table and came up with something that tinkled.
“Reach over and take these,” she said. “And drop another quarter. My address is on the note and that’s the key. There’s juice in the refrigerator. Sleep on the sofa. I’ll be there later. I’m off early today.”
I grinned.
“Forget it,” she said. “You stay on that sofa and away from me. I can’t afford to catch your cold.”
I shrugged with enormous regret, pocketed key and note, and went outside to find a cab.
Merle’s apartment was a little north of the Loop, on a street called Barry. It was a three-story yellow building with a courtyard and maybe twenty apartments in three entrances. Her place was in the second entrance on the second floor. It was small-two rooms with a kitchen area that stood in a corner of the living room. The bedroom was big enough for a single bed. On the chest of drawers near the bed, there was a picture of a good-looking man with a thin smile. The picture looked as if it were a few years old. There was also a picture of a little girl-a cute kid with dark hair, a big grin, and a tooth missing in front. She looked something like Merle.
The furniture looked used or rented. It was clean, but it didn’t look like the kind of thing I would have guessed she had. The refrigerator had a full quart of juice. I drank most of it and looked for cereal while I made coffee. There wasn’t any cereal, so I ate a sandwich with two slices of something that was either pale salami or ripe bologna. There was no bath, just a shower. I used it, shaved, drank my coffee, and stretched out on the sofa with a roll of toilet paper for my nose. I fell asleep. No dreams came. No trip to Cincinnati. No Marx Brothers.
A knock at the door pulled me slowly out of the sofa. I fumbled for my gun and tried not to breathe, which is easy with a deviated septum and the flu. I had figured Merle for someone who’d help a poor bedraggled detective, but I’ve been wrong about women, men and kids all my life. She might just have given Costello a call, claimed a reward or amnesty, and gone back to the dice.
“Wake up and open the door,” she whispered. “You took my only key.”
I opened the door, holding the gun behind my back. She came in and threw her coat on a chair.
“You always sleep with that?” she said, walking to the kitchen.
“This,” I said looking at the gun. “I don’t know what this is.”
She touched the coffee, found it cold and turned the heat back on. Then she turned and looked at me. I had taken my clothes off and stood in underwear and a tee shirt with the.38 in my hand. I looked down at myself and shrugged. She laughed and drank her coffee.
“You alone?”
“Peters,” I said. “Toby Peters. If you mean do I have a family, just a brother. Nothing else. I once had a wife.”
“I know how that is,” she said, biting her lower lip.
“You want to talk about it?” I said.
“No,” she said. “I want to finish my coffee and admire your droopy drawers. Then I want to get in bed.”
“I remember,” I said sadly. “You don’t want a cold, and I stay on the sofa.”
“It’s too late,” she said, pulling a napkin from a cabinet and dabbing her nose, “I already caught your cold.”
“Really,” I grinned.
“Really,” she grinned back, a kind of sad, friendly grin.
Ten minutes later we were in the small bed, sneezing, laughing, exploring and coughing. It was love time in the pneumonia ward. Her body was small and perfect. Mine was hard and scarred and imperfect-an attraction of opposites.
“What happened to your nose?” she said, kissing it.
“It put up a gallant but losing fight three times too many.”
“I like it.”
“It’s hard to breathe through it, especially when I have a cold.”
“Are you always this romantic?”
“Only when I’m inspired by royalty.”
An idea hit me, and I rolled over on top of her and we both tumbled off the bed. We bounced together against the wall and stayed that way till someone knocked at the door. She squeezed away from me and called, “Who is it?”
“Ray.”
“Just a second.”
She put on an oversize purple robe and rolled her sleeves up. The bottom of the robe trailed on the floor. She padded barefoot to the door, looking like a kid trying to play grownup. I rolled over and pulled on my shorts.
“Peters,” beamed Ray Narducy, a cab driver sans protective muffler. His hack hat was pushed back on his head and his glasses had a film of steam over them.
“Hi kid,” I said.
“Find anything?”
“A little,” I answered. “Our friends in the Caddy caught up with me, and I’m trying to keep out of their way.”